Storsjöodjuret: Karin and Märta's sighting at Åssjön, 1893

Storsjön is the great lake of Jämtland. Its monster, Storsjöodjuret, has a long trail behind it. The Jamtli museum indexes some 200 accounts going back to 1635. In 1893 that trail became a sensation.

13 October 1893. Two young sisters, Karin and Märta, went down to the shore of Åssjön, the eastern part of Storsjön, near the village of Sörbyn. They had come to wash clothes.

Then they saw a head. It rose and sank in the water. Karin threw stones at it. The animal swam swiftly toward the shore. The girls ran. In the end, the animal submerged.

Their description survives as testimony no. 11 in the study by zoologist Peter Olsson. The head was round, smooth and hard, like a dog's. The torso was 8 to 9 feet. It had fins instead of forelegs. It had large ears too.

Other tellings add more. One describes something close to a giant frog, about 4 m long, with hind legs as long as its body, a whipping tail, two large ears and eyes "like teacups". A newspaper editor interviewed the girls and believed them. He wrote: "May lecturer Olsson, the provincial doctor, the lawyers and the town prosecutor himself forgive me."

Years later, Jamtli recorded Ester Rehn telling a strikingly similar story. She was 18 at the time and 71 when she told it. She lived in Sörbyn with her sister Karin, three years older. Karin stood on a rock in the lake, shouted and threw stones. The creature was surely three metres long, Ester said, and grey as an elephant, with smooth, hard skin. It charged toward Karin. Ester climbed a birch tree to watch. It stayed for four hours, from 8 to 12. Whether this is the same encounter remains an open question.

The story spread across Sweden. When the ice broke up under the Frösö bridge at Christmas, Östersund was gripped by monster fever. In December, according to Jämtlandsposten, baited iron chains dressed in red cloth were fixed at two spots in the lake. In 1894 a company was formed in Östersund to capture the beast. Accounts link it to King Oscar II, as sponsor or donor. A large trap was baited with a pig. Nothing was ever caught. Albert Engström mocked the hunt in the magazine Strix. The trap now rests at Jamtli.

In 1899 Peter Olsson, a docent in zoology at Lund and a biology lecturer in Östersund, published his study of the testimonies. Olsson concluded that the animal was most likely an unknown aquatic mammal, perhaps a giant seal.

No hoax claim and no conventional explanation has been published for this sighting. For the lake in general, a giant wels catfish has been suggested, though experts reject it. In 1998 the largest search of the lake, with sonar, an underwater camera and Adrian Shine of the Loch Ness Project, found nothing. Researcher Sanna Händén-Svensson has since written a doctoral thesis on the creature at Lund. The moment itself still belongs to two sisters at Åssjön, and a head rising out of the water.